


for your steps following

by na_scathach



Series: the underground [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: ???? - Freeform, Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Or Is It?, ha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24799309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/na_scathach/pseuds/na_scathach
Summary: (and damned if i look back)leo didn't get attached to people. machines? sure. you could fix machines. you could not put a human back together. once they died, they were gone forever. poof. like smoke on a windy day
Relationships: Jason Grace/Leo Valdez, Orpheus/Eurydice
Series: the underground [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793698
Comments: 9
Kudos: 50





	for your steps following

**Author's Note:**

> ???? i wrote this in forty minutes after seeing a shitpost about a fake pjo short story about valgrace with eurydice and orpheus undertones. 
> 
> the title comes from Seamus Heany's _The Underground_ which is my favorite poem of his. he's a great poet. you should read some of his stuff. im contractibly obligated to cause i have to study him for english but he's got some good poems (especially if you like northern ireland, sectarian violence and it's massive impact on the catholic diaspora in NI)

leo stares at the ground. 

the ground stares back. earth and flowers, speckled with stone and slowly falling rain. a mist has settled on new york, making leo feel like he's stuck in a silent hill game. silent hill is a game about being in your own personal hell, though, so leo supposes that it's fitting. leo tilts his head back, just a bit, so he can feel the wet, misty dampness on his face. he sighs and it rattles around his rib-cage, because he's pretty sure that sigh is the only thing left in his chest. 

leo didn't get attached to people. machines? sure. you could fix machines. you could not put a human back together. once they died, they were gone forever. poof. like smoke on a windy day.

one of many flaws in humans. leo's gotta ask his dad when he was designing the first human, why didn't he give them automaton bodies? easily fixable and immortal and better than paper thin skin. if leo was his dad, and that's looking more and more likely as the years go on, he'd give metal hearts and golden blood to humans. he wouldn't give them the curse of curiosity and punish them when they opened the wrong fucking box. 

but. then. he supposes. they wouldn't be human anymore. 

leo drops his head, black curls plastered to his face. he's stalling. he knows he's stalling. coward. idiot, idiot, idiot-

"taking one last look?" she asks, tight, black curls free around her face. she's beautiful, the kind of beautiful that makes everyone turn their heads and makes their eyes follow her because there's just something about her. her midnight black skin shines in the dull grey morning of new york and her dark eyes twinkle with challenge. 

beautiful. 

she's wearing a dark grey pant-suit which is some pretty weird quest clothes. her golden jewelry shimmers and shines. leo's father was only noticed by olympus for his foster mother's jewellery. leo is only ever noticed because he can never shut the fuck up.

"yeah," he says, swallowing roughly, voice rough from disuse, "you could say that"

she snorts. "you godlings. always so dramatic. it's the ichor. goes straight to your head. my beloved wa-" she coughs, and leo averts his eyes, " _ -is,  _ just the same"

"nah," leo tells her, scuffing a doc martin against the compact dirt. he imagines it giving away beneath his feet. "sons of apollo are just like that. im just a lowly son of hephaestus"

she snorts again. she walks closer to him. she towers over him, but leo has always been small. weak. he was born like this, weak and small and dead. leo was born dead. he wonders what everyone else's life would be like if he had stayed like that. better? worse? somewhere in the middle?. 

he shakes those thoughts out of his head. he's on another suicide mission and leo has always known he'd never live long. he was a sick kid, always weird complications with his heart, and then foster care showed him what the world was really like and what the world was  _ really _ like apparently was a stanley knife. he had thought gaia was a way out. a thing worth dying for. and then he had a reason to come back and-

steady breath. the air tastes like salt and petrichor. 

they're in central park and staring at the back entrance to the underworld. it would make him giggle a little if leo could feel anything. 

leo didn't get attached to people. but somehow people got attached to him and he let them in between his cracks and crevices. they spilled themselves there like gold and made leo  _ shine- _

jason grace climbed straight into leo's ribcage with nothing but a awkward smile and bioluminescent eyes. he made a fucking home for himself in leo's lungs, like thick cigarette smoke and leo fell so fast he's pretty sure he broke some of the laws of gravity. 

jason grace made leo realise why his dad hadn't made humans out of metal and steam, because an automaton body could never hope to hold all of jason grace. like trapping lightning in a bottle. impossible. cruel, even. 

leo loved jason and soon leo will love jason. 

and jason doesn't even need to love him back and maybe that makes leo one sad motherfucker but leo has never had anyone and if he can bring jason back maybe, just maybe, leo can fill up the void inside his chest. he's so  _ tired _ of losing things. 

leo wants to love and be loved in return but he's done without the latter for a very long time, so he supposes he can last a while longer. 

eurydice places a soft palm on his jacket shoulder. she smiles, gently, but she's got fire in her eyes. 

after the doors of death opened, eurydice made her break for the doors and escaped. unlike her husband, she never looked back. 

orpheus did not come. 

they're both here to get someone back. both here because they died and then out-ran death. 

eurydice never looked back. leo just ran away. 

coward. coward. coward. 

eurydice hands him the valdezinator and a surprised laugh claws it's brutal way out of his throat. it tastes like ash and nicotine. 

he strums the strings. as a kid, leo used to play piano, guitar, violin, anything he could get his hands on. he was only ever good at the piano but- 

he created this. a  _ machine _ . leo's good with machines.

calypso's melody rings it's own way out, strings vibrating with their shared loneliness and bitterness. he hopes she's okay with the hunters. she deserves happiness, even if leo couldn't give it to her. 

the ground cracks and moves and leo's so empty and jason, jason, jason, c'mon, come and make me feel something, anything at all. ill do anything, but please just fix the space you left inside my chest.

eurydice burns her stare into the entranceway. the underworld howls and burns and leo was raised catholic, so this is what he imagined hell would be like. he always knew he'd eventually go to hell. he sinned with every breath. he lived wrong, loved wrong and didn't just take a bite, he ate the whole fucking apple. 

he drops the valdezinator to the ground. 

"don't look back," she orders, one hand gripping his skinny shoulder. her eyes burn with something wild and furious. love, is what normal people would call it. 

(if leo could see himself, he'd see his own eyes, alight like a forge, the magma in his veins glowing outwards. the creatures born from gods have always loved truly and deeply, almost in direct opposition to their parents)

leo breaths out fire, smoke and embers. his eyes turn towards hell. 

they descend. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me at my tumblr [thelosttrio](https://thelosttrio.tumblr.com/)


End file.
